The present invention relates to electronic medical records and, in particular, to a system and method for improving the accessibility of electronic medical records stored on removable media.
Personal health record (PHR) websites allow a patient to record patient-sourced health data and provide general health-related information. A patient may use a PHR site, for example, to keep a healthcare diary, record medications, track information such as weight or blood pressure, etc. These personal health record sites serve a valuable purpose in preserving patient-sourced data.
These sites may also provide continuity in a patient's medical information recordkeeping when healthcare providers are changed or multiple healthcare providers are used. Some personal health record sites allow data to be uploaded from electronic portals of healthcare institutions, or are an integral part of the medical record system of the healthcare institution. This inclusion of the medical record system data means that the PHR site may serve as a centralized health record repository for the patient while the patient is a patient of the healthcare institution. One example of such a system is the MyChart PHR system provided by the Epic Systems Corporation of Verona, Wis. and described in United States Patent Application 20030208381 filed Mar. 29, 2001 and entitled: Patient Health Record Access System, incorporated herein by reference.
Such personal health record sites may provide a variety of features to help the patient organize and understand his medical data. The specific features may vary widely between implementers of the personal health record sites. Exemplary features include data organization, data augmentation, inclusion of image files, data mining capabilities, etc.
The uploading of a patient's medical data to a PHR is greatly facilitated by emerging standards for electronic medical records which define standard formats for such data. Standardized formats allow the data to be readily integrated into the familiar environment of the PHR. Generally, such standards are designed to promote continuity in a patient's healthcare records as the patient moves between healthcare providers over the course of his or her life. Ideally, a universal standard or set of translatable standards allows patients to easily transfer their electronic medical files to a new healthcare provider, for example over the Internet, as the patients change healthcare providers.
Current standards for electronic medical records anticipate that some data transfers will employ removable storage media such as optical disks or flash memory drives (thumb drives) receiving downloaded electronic medical records that are then physically transported by the patient. The downloaded files, formatted for storage on such media, may include a human readable index file to assist the end user in identifying the files and uploading them to an electronic medical record system at a receiving institution. This index file can be formatted, for example in HTML, for viewing on a standard browser.